


A (Rather Silly) Ghost Story

by Kantayra



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their deaths, Harry and Draco return to Hogwarts as ghosts to resolve the one thing they left undone in their lifetimes. Fortunately, thanks to their stubbornness, it only takes them two-thousand years to figure out what that obviously is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A (Rather Silly) Ghost Story

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to kallysten for proof-reading and hand-holding.

Harry James Potter saved the entire wizarding world twice, married his childhood sweetheart, had eight beautiful children all named for fallen heroes in the war (which, incidentally, began an alarmingly virulent trend to name _all_ children after Potter-Age historical figures), spent his career in the job of his dreams, and finally died a peaceful death at home, surrounded by friends and family, at a ripe old age.

Draco Narcissus Malfoy was forced into the Death Eater ranks, married a pureblood witch for entirely political reasons, managed to get it up long enough to produce one Son and Heir, lived a life of privileged luxury, and spent his waning years – to his son and grandson’s indulgent amusement – petitioning the Ministry of Magic to require wizarding families to name their children after something proper – like celestial bodies, for example – rather than the alarmingly virulent trend mentioned above, before he was found one morning collapsed over his desk by one of the house elves.

Entirely coincidentally, the two childhood rivals died within a week of each other.

Not so coincidentally, the Monday after the two lavish funerals were carried out, Harry James Potter and Draco Narcissus Malfoy both appeared back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as ghost versions of their teenage selves.

“I don’t understand,” Harry said incredulously of his new semi-existence.

“Shocking, that,” Draco snorted.

Harry glared at him. “This is all _your_ fault, isn’t it? With those stupid petitions and… You couldn’t just _let it go_?”

“But ‘Hedwig Dobby’ _is_ a stupid name!” Draco insisted.

A fistfight broke out immediately following, which was entirely harmless to Hogwarts’ halls and surprised students, since both participants were merely ghosts, but left both Harry and Draco with unfortunate black eyes, which looked very silly on spirits, indeed. And also Moaning Myrtle made a sound an awful lot like the noises for which she was named, only in a strangely orgasmic way this time.

***

Over the years, it became a new Hogwarts tradition. Every year on the first day of the term, the Hogwarts ghosts were required in the Great Hall. Harry and Draco could never pause in their fight, even for a moment, so they always arrived right in the middle of things, throwing each other right through the sumptuous feast on the tables and wrestling through the floor and ceiling. It was quite a show.

“D’you think there’ll be hair-pulling again this year?” asked Aquarius Neville Skeeter.

Colin Pollux Bulstrode laughed. “You remember when they started rowing right in Professor Brown’s beard?”

“Does that count as hair-pulling, do you think?” Aquarius snickered back.

“Maybe the opposite.”

That year, true to form, Harry and Draco did not disappoint. Harry fell, shrieking, through the enchanted ceiling right at the beginning of dessert. He tumbled through a nice cumulonimbus before landing in the pudding atop the Hufflepuff table. Instants later, Draco leapt down from the ceiling after him. Harry rolled onto the floor, but Draco just fell _through_ the table until he was on the floor, too, and they promptly began shoving at each other’s faces, flailing about right among the feet of the Hufflepuff second-years.

“Eek!” Lyra Lavender Greyback squealed.

Harry proceeded to flip Draco right through her shins and finally got Draco pinned, face-down, between the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables. “If you would just give it up already, we could rest in peace!” Harry exclaimed in frustration.

“ _Me_?” Draco retorted, squirming and trying to buck up against Harry’s hold. “Of course, Perfect Potter could never even _consider_ the notion that _he_ is responsible for trapping us in limbo!”

“ _I_ lived a _happy_ life!” Harry insisted. “ _I_ died with no regrets! Unlike _some people_ , who spent the last decades of their life writing nasty letters to the Ministry and swatting passing children in Diagon Alley with their cane!”

“They were looking at me funny!” Draco fumed and, finally, managed to elbow Harry in the ribs, and the two of them chased each other right through the teachers’ table and out the back of the Great Hall.

Professor Brown patted his unmolested beard just for reassurance.

***

Another change that occurred in Hogwarts after the arrival of the two new ghosts was the regular disruption of classes. Nearly all the professors were experts in the _Spiritus Repulsus_ charm. The only exception was Professor Binns, who never seemed to notice the disruptions to his lectures.

On one notable February morn, Professor Binns was droning on about the Neo Death Eater resurgence in the 22nd century, when Harry and Draco fell through the classroom door, strangling each other. Parvati Hydra Hagrid squeaked and dropped her quill in surprise, which made Zacharias Aries Filch snicker at her. Cassiopeia Hannah Nott sent him a scathing look, but then even she was distracted from Professor Binns’ drone by the argument that erupted between Harry and Draco.

“This is all because you couldn’t deal with your own petty inadequacies!” Harry shouted.

“—While the Centaur Brigade continued its march against—” Binns’ monotone marched on just as relentlessly.

Draco sputtered. “ _Inadequacies_? I’ll have you know that that is one area where I most _certainly_ exceed _you_!”

“—During the Battle of Durham, when the Pennyfeather Movement interceded—”

Harry snorted. “Yeah? I seem to recall getting eight out of mine. You, what? Barely managed _one_?”

Draco gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. “It’s quality that matters, not quantity,” he said in a low growl.

“—After Minister Finch-Fletchley was appointed and the Wizengamot seats were filled—”

“Spoken like someone who doesn’t have any _quantity_ down there,” Harry snapped back.

Draco seethed. “Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll show _you_!” And he began to unfasten his spectral trousers then and there.

The class gaped.

“—Then, in 2187,” Binns continued on obliviously.

“Yeah, let’s see!” Harry shot back and began unfastening his own trousers.

The class gaped more.

“—And that was the beginning of the Bramble-Pushers’ Era,” Binns concluded.

Both sets of trousers dropped amid boggling eyes and deliberately averted gazes.

So of course, the entire class failed the exams on _that_ unit. Even Cassiopeia.

***

No one quite knew when exactly, because Harry and Draco were ghosts and didn’t keep much track of time, but somewhere in the 24th century, they finally came to a pause in their eternal row. Ghosts really couldn’t become out of breath, even after fighting for 300 years straight, but they still had the illusion of breath and so one day, with Draco standing at the bottom of the Great Lake and Harry a few feet from him in the Slytherin common room, they broke apart, panting for breath.

“This is stupid,” Draco informed Harry haughtily. Unfortunately, the effect was warped by the fact that he was technically in water, so his words came out with a weird, garbled sound.

“About time you acknowledged you’re being a git,” Harry huffed.

Draco glared. “ _Me_? _You’re_ the one who’s been attacking me for three centuries straight!”

“Only because _you_ got us trapped as ghosts for eternity!” Harry retorted.

It could have broken into another fistfight at that point, but even Harry and Draco were a little tired of fistfights by then. Instead, Draco looked down his nose snootily at Harry and said, “You don’t _know_ I’m responsible.”

And that gave Harry pause. More importantly, it gave him a mystery to solve, and being back at Hogwarts and a teenager (albeit an undead one), Harry couldn’t let that sort of thing stand. “Why _do_ you think we’re here, then?” Harry sat himself on a sofa opposite the rock on the bottom of the lake that Draco was looking prissy upon.

Draco gave Harry a suspicious look. “I’m certain _I_ don’t know.”

“Well,” Harry considered thoughtfully, “do you want to be ghosts forever?”

“Eternity with _you_?” Draco scoffed with an elegance that only a lifetime of disdain could provide.

Harry rolled his eyes. “Then we should see about getting ourselves out of this fix,” he concluded.

Draco considered this warily. “How?”

“Well, ghosts are spirits who died with something unresolved, right?”

“I suppose…”

“Then we just have to figure out what we left unresolved and set it straight,” Harry said optimistically.

Draco paused. “Fine.”

“It can’t be that stupid ‘naming children after celestial bodies’ nonsense, since Scorpius got that passed into law as a memorial to you after your death,” Harry said thoughtfully. “And, by the way, have you noticed the horrors _that_ has inflicted on the student body recently?”

Draco scowled at Harry. “I _have_ noticed that certain _other_ absurd conventions are traumatizing them just as much,” he retorted, and another fight nearly broke out right then.

Fortunately, Harry regained his cool in time. “Seriously, though. Do you have any id—?” Harry began, but in response Draco had already pulled a phantom parchment from his pocket and was scribbling away on it like mad. Cautiously, Harry wandered through the glass into the bottom of the lake in time to see Draco write: _#23: Chop off that dreadful cowlick that gets stuck in Potter’s glasses. In fact: #24: Finally defeat the monstrosity that is Potter’s hair._

“Uh, Malfoy?” Harry said, worried.

“What?” Draco was too busy adding to his list at a ferocious rate.

“How many regrets do you _have_?”

“Regarding you?” Draco paused to think for a moment. “Only one-hundred-three or so, I think. But only three dozen of those involve your hair, don’t worry.”

Harry groaned and tried to bang his head against the glass, which was dissatisfyingly ineffective when one was a ghost.

***

Thus began a new era at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Now, classes were only disrupted by Harry and Draco punching each other forty percent of the time. The remaining sixty percent of the time, the students were interrupted by much more puzzling events.

“You _will_ learn to eat your soup properly,” Draco insisted in the Great Hall one Christmas Eve. “No slurping, now!”

“What’s the point of this?” Harry complained. “We’re _dead_! I can’t eat soup anyway.”

“But,” Draco said with a suspiciously manipulative-sounding sniff, “I always regretted that I never got the chance to correct your abhorrent manners.”

Harry muttered under his breath and managed to slurp the soup, even though he wasn’t even really eating it.

Across the table, Aquila Nymphadora Trelawney just _goggled_ at them.

Several years after that, the first-year boys’ dormitory for Ravenclaw House woke up one night to hear what sounded like a banshee crying. Cetus Blaise Umbridge and Seamus Rigel Chang, who were a bit braver than the rest, snuck into the bathroom to find that the girly screeches were coming from ghost Draco, who had a ghost comb in one hand and ghost mousse in the other, while the true horror that was Harry’s ghost hair remained undaunted by his noblest efforts. Ghost Harry was laughing at him, until the ghost mousse somehow landed upended right atop his ghost head.

Finally, however, Harry and Draco were left with only one conclusion:

“It _must_ be Quidditch!” Harry insisted one foggy spring morning, while he shoved Draco onto a ghost broomstick. “We’ve done every other thing on your list!”

Draco had a particularly unusual expression on his face, like he’d thought of something Harry hadn’t, but he didn’t object when Harry shoved his pert, ghost bum into the air.

***

From that point on, Harry and Draco played Quidditch every day and night. Or rather, they played Quidditch when the living teams didn’t need the pitch, or when they weren’t wrestling on the grass, screaming at each other over some foul or other. Harry seemed to get fouled an awful lot, even though they never had been able to locate ghost bludgers.

The ghost snitch had been captured hundreds of times, of course, just never in such a way that satisfied Draco.

“Oh, come _on_!” Harry complained after catching the snitch for the third time one particular night. “Are you even trying?”

Draco made a sound that was likely supposed to be a growl, but kittens had been known to sound more menacing. “It defeats the purpose of this whole exercise if you always win, you know.”

“So… You want me to lose on _purpose_? Wow, Malfoy, even your regrets know that you’re miserable at Quidditch.”

“I didn’t mean _that_!” Draco spat, flustered. “I can beat you on my own!”

Harry gave him a thoroughly incredulous look and released the snitch again.

It became something of a spectacle for Hogwarts’ students to entertain themselves between studying and getting into mischief: how will Harry defeat Draco _today_?

“And they’re off again!” announced Brian Arkushanangarushashutu Lovegood, who – like his great-great-great-great-some-indeterminate-number-of-greats-grand-aunt – had taken to announcing Quidditch.

“It really is statistically nearly impossible,” Sagittarius Marvolo Thomas commented later that day. The Hufflepuff fourth-year class decided to study outside in the Quidditch stands so that they could watch the everlasting game and review Charms at the same time. “Draco should win _some_ of the time.”

Libra Bellatrix McGonagall looked up just in time to see Harry fly a loop right around Draco’s head and steal the snitch. “Maybe Harry’s just _better_ ,” she snorted.

Draco snarled in her direction. “ _Again_ ,” he demanded of Harry.

Harry sighed and released the snitch, upon which Draco immediately smacked Harry in the head so that he fell straight off his broom, reached out, and caught the snitch before it had a chance to zoom away and escape. “I got it!” Draco exclaimed in joy.

On the ground, Harry rose, snapped his broken neck back into proper position, and _glared_ at Draco. “You just broke my neck!” Harry accused.

“You were dead anyway,” Draco batted this concern aside like it was nothing.

Harry sighed. “So, are you satisfied now? You finally beat me.” He looked down hopefully at his hands, as if expecting to see them finally vanish before his very eyes as he was pulled into the blissful unknown.

Draco pouted down at the snitch in his hand. “But you’ve still gotten it more often…”

Harry threw his broomstick at Draco.

***

It took centuries, but finally Draco succeeded in capturing the snitch enough times that even _he_ grew bored with challenging Harry to Quidditch.

“That should be it, then,” Harry insisted. “We’ve done _everything_ on your list. You should have no further regrets!”

“Well,” Draco said thoughtfully, “there must be _something_ more I can do about your hair…” Even he realized that he had tried every magical product known to wizarding-kind, however, and none were powerful enough to tame Harry’s hair into something decent.

Harry sat down on the roof of Gryffindor Tower with a wistful sigh. “I don’t understand…” he said morosely. “ _Why_ are we still here?”

Draco coughed.

Harry gave him a thoroughly oblivious look.

Draco sighed. “Look, I hardly think we’d _both_ be ghosts if it was only a regret of _mine_ that needed to be rectified.”

Harry blinked at him for a minute, before he was forced to conclude that – unfortunately – what Draco was saying made a lot of sense. “Then why did we just spend the last millennium going through your wish-list?”

Draco looked at Harry like he was very stupid. “Because it was _my wish-list_.”

Harry tried to bang his head on Gryffindor Tower, which didn’t work just like every other time he’d tried to bang his head in frustration since becoming a ghost, which was quite often.

Draco waited patiently, looking down his nose at Harry the whole time, while Harry cursed a lot and failed to kick things. “I always knew you weren’t right in the head,” Draco said dryly once Harry had calmed down some.

Harry lay back on the roof and sighed. “Fine, then. What could we possibly _both_ regret about our lives that’s keeping us here?”

Draco squirmed a bit in a way that made his ghost bum look quite enticing.

Harry frowned. “It would have to involve something we would do together that we haven’t tried already…”

Draco tried bending over surreptitiously to touch his toes.

Harry stared right through Draco’s translucent arse and tried to penetrate this puzzling mystery. “Maybe we _should_ try more Quidditch—”

And Draco finally couldn’t take it anymore and tackled Harry back down, through the tower, three classrooms, and all the way into the dungeons. They ended up on a potions’ master’s desk, and before Harry could let out another inane, oblivious question, Draco latched his mouth onto Harry’s.

This was problematic for the entire first-year potions’ class, of course, but most particularly for the two first-years accepted that year who had the misfortune to be named after the two wizarding heroes now devouring each other like wild animals in heat:

“Oh, Harry, _yes_!” and “Fuck, Draco, just like that!” were very alarming things to hear when one’s name was either Harry or Draco.

To make matters worse, the two students in question had the double misfortune to be the respective heirs of the Potter and Malfoy families.

“Mmm, Harry, harder! Yes, _yes_ , Potter!” caused young Harry Draco Potter to blush to the roots of his messy, black hair.

“God, Malfoy! You’re so fucking—Yes, _Draco_!” made young Draco Harry Malfoy blush just as brightly.

And then their eyes met, and they blushed even _more_ , so Draco Harry Malfoy snuck his nose up in the air to pretend like it didn’t bother him, and Harry Draco Potter toed the ground nervously with his shoe, and both of them pretended not to be thinking about how the other _was_ rather cute, after all.

Oblivious to the plights of their mortal descendants, ghost Harry and Draco finally broke apart from their passionate kiss. “I think I’ve finally figured out what we need to do!” Harry exclaimed excitedly and placed his hand on that very firm bum that had been seeking attention for so long.

Draco tried not to scream in frustration and instead screamed when Harry proceeded to give his pretty bottom the work-out of a lifetime (or deathtime, as the case may be). In some things, at least, Harry was thankfully a quick study.

Needless to say, potions’ class was abruptly dismissed that day.

***

The latest twist ghost Harry and ghost Draco’s adventures took caused more hubbub than the rest. It turned out that ghost prostates still worked surprisingly well, and Draco was exceptionally vocal when his was stimulated. The Board of Governors was filled with horrified complaints of parents. Fortunately, the teaching staff quickly developed a Censoring Spell, which blocked out the very naughtiest bits and kept the vocal emanations down to a reasonable decibel level.

Of course, it still tended to turn everyone off their supper when Harry and Draco decided to have ghost sex right atop the teachers’ table at the forefront of the Great Hall at mealtime.

“Mmm,” Harry finally settled comfortably onto Draco after some indeterminate number of decades of incredible sex. Neither of them could quite remember how they’d gotten there and were entirely oblivious to the fact that the teachers weren’t able to get at their food without reaching _through_ Harry and Draco’s naked bodies.

“Mmm,” Draco agreed and clutched Harry closer to him.

“So,” Harry finally said, nuzzling Draco’s throat, “ _that_ was what we missed out on while we were alive.”

“Your fault entirely,” Draco chided him. “I was amenable at any time.”

“I was _married_!” Harry protested.

“So was I,” Draco looked honestly puzzled as to why Harry would point such a thing out.

Harry opened his mouth to object, then shrugged and closed it again. It seemed that, after a millennium or two, even he had learned that some arguments weren’t worth having.

“Is that it, then?” Harry asked, stroking Draco’s very pretty ghost hair. “I can’t imagine either of us could be dissatisfied anymore after _that_.”

“Well…” Draco drawled.

Harry gaped down at him in disbelief.

“Thanks to your obliviousness, I was forced to live an entire lifetime without. And then Salazar only knows how many more years _after_ death. I suppose it’s only fair that you spend just as much time making it up to me.”

Harry gulped. “You mean I’m going to have to shag you, non-stop, for over _two thousand years_?”

“Plus interest,” Draco added, just for good measure.

At the point, the teachers wisely decided to make a strategic retreat, since their dining table would not be fit for eating for quite some time. Possibly ever.

“Headmaster Goyle?” a small hand caught the Headmaster’s sleeve amid the teachers’ mass exodus. “That’s Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, right?”

Headmaster Goyle nodded ruefully.

“So they’re the ones who are responsible for me…being like I am?” Big, tear-filled eyes blinked up at the Headmaster.

Headmaster Goyle patted poor little SCR-1845-6357B William-Charles-Percival-Frederick-George-Ronald-Ginervus Smith’s head comfortingly. “There, there,” he said. Really, it was the only thing he could do.

And, perpetually oblivious to the chaos their eternal rivalry had produced, Harry and Draco returned to merrily shagging atop the teachers’ table, for a forever or two.

The End.


End file.
